Walk around in anonymity wearing the Pixelhead balaclava

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Unless you happen to live in a rural area, chances are wherever you walk at least one camera will be recording you. Surveillance has become a part of every day life, with CCTV cameras being installed increasingly in our towns and cities.

It’s impossible to stay out of the gaze of such systems, but a new balaclava design means you don’t have to. It’s called the Pixelhead and carries a pixelated pattern to cover your identity and will likely confuse anyone watching surveillance footage or happening to capture you as part of an image or video they capture on their phone.

The Pixelhead has been designed by German artist Martin Backes as a way of highlighting anonymity, or a lack thereof, as more and more images appear online across social networks, Google’s StreetView, and as part of the footage recorded by CCTV. Backes sees it as media camouflage and a way of creating your own anonymity in this Internet age.

The balaclava is made of elastic fabric and the pattern is actually a pixel print of the German Secretary of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich. He works for the Federal Ministry of the Interior for Germany–the department tasked with protecting people from such things as terrorism and managing law enforcement in the country.

Backes is only making 333 Pixelhead balaclavas, each of which will be hand sewn, signed, and numbered. However, as it offers a very simple way of being anonymous it won’t take long for other Pixelheads to appear and I wouldn’t be surprised to see people at demonstrations wearing them to hide their identity.